My friend and I got into this argument recently. I said that I still think traditional and that the guy should pay for the dates. I chip in on buying gifts and stuff for around his apartment and surprise tickets for events. However, I have never felt comfortable splitting dates or taking turns paying. She said that she either always splits the bill every time with her bf or she and her bf take turns paying. To me this seems more like friendship. They recently broke up mainly because he thinks that after your married, all of your finances stay separate. What is the norm these days???

Fiance and I take turns paying for everything pretty much. We do tend to think of it as our money, but we don’t plan to combine our finances officially until after the wedding, so we just alternate who pays. I let him pay for a few more of the dates because it makes him feel manly, but I balance it out by paying the bills slightly more often than him.

He pays when he can; but I make more money and always want to go out. I don’t mind paying. Especially now; were just about to get married; whats mine is yours and whats yours is mine has taken full effect. I never minded paying for dinners.

Darling Husband and I obviously share an account now, so we both “pay,” I guess depending on who makes more money. But before we combined our money, he always paid unless:

1. It was his birthday or I took him out to celebrate a promotion or something.

2. If I was grabbing dinner at a take-out restaurant or something, I wouldn’t ask him to pay me back or anything like that.

To each their own, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a guy having me pay. If he wasn’t doing well financially, I would be fine with splitting the bill, but there’s something nice about having a guy take you out and footing the bill. Call me antiquated I guess. 🙂

Before SO and i moved in together (and got a joint account which we use for everything we do together), we took turns paying. Sometimes it would depend on who had the better paycheck at the moment. (I went to college, he worked full time, so he paid more often than I did). After the initial “courting” phase, I felt we were in this relationship together. We were equals, and I would have hated for him to spend money every weekend on me while i sat back & counted my benjamins lol I dont think its fair for a guy to pay for everything. It sets a precident for the future for him to be a doormat. I’ve seen it happen too many times.

@flowermower: Darling Husband is really old fashioned and he never lets me pay for dates. We have a joint account so technically we both pay, but he always insists on using his card. Whatever makes him happy, haha.

After Darling Husband and I had been dating for a while, I started reciprocating by making dinner for him and so forth.

Even though we’re married now, he still pays most of the time and he always gets our concert tickets and handles my car maintenance and repairs. I spoil him and treat him in other ways, though. For example, I’m always cooking special treats for him. He loves having really nice gourmet snacks when we’re watching Netflix, etc.

We alternate, but we’ve been together for 7 years, so he’d go broke if he paid for food every time we went out. We have three different levels of food: 1) fast food, we alternate each time and maybe get it once or twice a month, 2) Chipotle and Noodles level food, we alternate and get it once or twice a week, 3) places that have servers (sushi or something else) we split down the middle and do once a month.

He paid for our dates when we first started dating but after a while going out to eat or going to a movie wasn’t really a “date” and was just us spending time together doing what we normally do. For special occasions (new jobs, graduation, etc.) we will take the other out on a real “date” and pay for dinner entirely because it’s more of a celebration gift.

We take turns. We both don’t make a lot of money. I actually make twice the money he makes but I also have a lot more bills than he does so it balances out to where I end up with the same amount of money as him at the end of the month.

Sometimes we’ll split the bill but that’s only if we’re both tight on money and really want to go out. Most of the time, we just take turns on who pays. I don’t mind this at all because honestly, it’s not fair to expect him to pay for every single time we went out. If he did that, he would never have any money!

And expecting the man to pay every single time is a bit sexist, in my opinion. This is 2013. We ladies can pay for ourselves if we need to.